Related Videos

The Conservatives are investigating a staffer after reports connected the party to an Edmonton phone-dialing company that made fake calls directing voters to non-existent polling stations during the last federal election, two senior sources tell QMI Agency.

Michael Sona was the Tory who took issue with a special ballot box that was set up by students at the University of Guelph prior to the official election day, saying the polling was illegitimate.

Elections Canada eventually allowed the student votes to be counted, but cautioned against impromptu votes in the future.

Sona is currently working as an executive assistant in the Parliament Hill office of MP Eve Adams and did not return requests to speak with QMI.

The pre-recorded "robocalls" — claiming to be from Elections Canada — were made in ridings with close races, telling constituents wrongly that their voting stations had been moved.

Those ridings reportedly included Guelph, as well as ridings in Ottawa, Winnipeg and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont.

While Elections Canada won't comment on investigations, the Liberals say it already looks badly on the prime minister and his party after reports suggested the Edmonton phone-dialing company is the same hired by the Conservatives in other election campaigns.

"It's a technique the Conservatives have borrowed from their Republican friends to the south," said Liberal MP John McCallum. "This is an effort to deprive Canadians of their right to vote."

The Liberals are calling for committee hearings into the allegations of the Tory tie-in, but with the Conservative majority McCallum says he doubts that will happen.

"Cynical old-style politics have become a trademark for the Conservatives," New Democrat interim leader Nycole Turmel said Thursday after the reports surfaced. "Just a few months ago they pled guilty to breaking election spending laws, now they've upped the ante with what looks like the most widespread and systematic voter suppression campaign in Canadian history."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who spent Thursday in Iqaluit, said he was unaware of the allegations.

"I have absolutely no knowledge on anything about these calls but, obviously, if there is anyone who has done anything wrong, we will expect that they will face the full consequences of the law," Harper told reporters.